I had the pleasure of engaging with Mandela Market place in South Conuty the unincorporated areas Ashland/Cherryland. Mandela Market place have and is currently managing two grant projects in my local community. Dana have been an inspiration to me personally an professionally as a woman. I've learned so much from her about sustaining a non-profit and creating great partnerships and collaborations, with county agencies and other non profit organizations. Ashland/Cherryland residents had a great need to organize around our food landscape and Mandela Market place has been great to work with and learn from.
I first met Dana at the Socap conference. It's a huge conference with a lot of fairly high falutin people. Dana's talk about her work transforming neighborhoods by galvanizing community members was by far the strongest presentation I saw.
I have worked in the nonprofit sector for 10 years and I knew from the time I met Dana and learned about her work with Mandela that I wanted to be involved. One year later I joined the board.
Mandela puts local resources to the ground tackling economic develompent, food systems and local business ownership. I truly believe there should be a Mandela Marketplace seeding and growing businesses across the country.
Hopefully one day there will be.